Not the Year for Happy Returns

He closed his speech by tapping the desk, and instead of resounding thumps, his fingers delivered feathery brush strokes.

A few minutes later, a staffer rolled the senator, in his wheelchair, from the chamber.

With so many distractions this week, there hasn't been much in the way of public happy-birthdaying for these most senior of senior senators, Stevens and Byrd. But in happier, more swaggering times, they were positively festive and feisty during birthday week.

"Oh! To be 82 again!" Byrd, then about to turn 88 and at the pinnacle of power, quipped from the Senate floor in his 2005 birthday week homage to Stevens. "He's getting a little bit grumbly, but he can be forgiven for that."

Last year, at the Byrd birthday bash, Stevens offered this homage, according to the Charleston Daily Mail: "As part of the Senate family, he is not only a gentleman, he has been a person who has reached out to us in personal times as well."

This year, Byrd, who shares his birth date with Vice President-elect Joe Biden, "plans to celebrate and enjoy the day and to thank God for allowing him to live such a long and accomplished life," Jesse Jacobs, his press secretary, wrote in an e-mail. Stevens spent his birthday awaiting a verdict from his fellow Republicans on whether they would strip him of his committee appointments. With a crowd milling in the hallway outside the caucus room, the senators ultimately decided to delay their decision. Stevens emerged from the caucus room looking pale and exhausted and told the reporters swarming him, "I haven't had a night's sleep for almost four months."

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Byrd, whose dazzling white pompadour and boundless energy once lent an aura of virility, now depends on that wheelchair after a fall at home and several hospitalizations. The quivers that overtake his hands are caused by what he calls a "benign essential tremor."

Erma Byrd, his wife of 68 years, died in 2006, a shattering loss that some observers blame for speeding a decline in his health -- "My wife does not call me Bob. She is kind enough to call me Robert," the ever-formal West Virginia senator once said in a speech. He has two daughters and a passel of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Senate insiders worry that his staff may essentially be acting as proxy senators on his behalf.

"There are days that he's more with it than other days," a senior Democratic Senate aide said last month as delicate and not-so-delicate attempts were being made to nudge Byrd out of the chairmanship. "He is now prone to loud outbursts that startle people. 'Amen, brother! Right on!' "